Tatyana McFadden is a household name at the Paralympics. After all, she’s qualified for and competed at seven of them—six summer Paralympics and one winter Paralympics.
The 35-year-old Marylander is a prolific wheelchair racer, competing in a range of track and field and road racing distances—the 100-meter sprint, 400-meter sprint, 800-meter sprint, the 4×100 relay, and the marathon.
McFadden has racked up 20 Paralympic medals in her illustrious career so far, as well as 24 World Marathon Majors wins in the wheelchair division.
McFadden was born with spina bifida, a condition where the spine and spinal cord don’t form properly as a fetus develops. While spina bifida affects people differently, in McFadden’s case, spina bifida meant that she was born without the ability to walk using her legs—something that was made harder by spending the first six years of her life without adequate medical care in an orphanage in Soviet-era Russia.
For the first six years of her life, McFadden walked on her hands to keep up with other children in the orphanage. After her adoption by American parents and relocation to the U.S., McFadden underwent a series of surgeries and medical care to treat overly tight tendons in her back and hips.
“After all those surgeries were complete, my parents wanted me to build strength,” McFadden says in an interview with Well+Good from Paris. “They wanted me to play sports and join in with the neighborhood kids. My parents did lots of research to find a local parasports program. And we did—I did many sports through them, the first actually being learning to swim.”
“There are now a lot more competitive women [in wheelchair racing], so that will be exciting, but it also means the potential for larger broadcast audiences, sponsorships, and the ability to educate others about the Paralympics. So, it’s a good thing that this year’s Games will be so competitive.” —Tatyana McFadden
McFadden played basketball, ice hockey, swimming, table tennis, and track and field via the parasports program, but track and field held her attention immediately as her incredibly strong arms made her successful in wheelchair racing.
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Today, McFadden’s love of wheelchair racing has taken her all over the world, from her first Paralympics in Greece in 2004 to this year’s Games in Paris.
“I’m really looking forward to the Games this year,” McFadden says. “Each event [that I compete in] is going to be really, really tough. There are now a lot more competitive women [in wheelchair racing], so that will be exciting, but it also means the potential for larger broadcast audiences, sponsorships, and the ability to educate others about the Paralympics. So, it’s a good thing that this year’s Games will be so competitive.”
McFadden continues to shock the world with her phenomenal strength and strategy in track and field and road racing, but after 20 years of racing at an elite level, how does she avoid burnout?
She shares five of her top tips for avoiding burnout in sport and in life with us below.
1. She doesn’t focus on racing all the time
McFadden may be best known at this point in time for her record-setting athletic career, but she’s also accomplished outside of being an athlete.
She completed a master’s degree in education from the University of Illinois, which is also her undergraduate alma mater, in 2018, and completed a subsequent internship.
Today, McFadden says that filling up her mental and emotional cups with activities like walking her dog, Bentley, and spending time with family in Maryland provide a much-needed respite from being focused on competing all the time.
McFadden also invests in giving back to the athletic community by sharing her experiences through speaking engagements—and she even wrote a children’s book, Ya Sama! Moments From My Life. (“Ya sama” means “I can do it” in Russian.)
“Balance looks different at different points in my life,” McFadden says. “But finding things outside of sport that are fun is key for me.”
Although it may seem that McFadden is all athletics all the time, part of her winning record is that she knows when to put her attention toward other fulfilling activities, too.
2. She maintains a “young soul”
“I definitely have what I would call a ‘young soul,’” McFadden says. “I may be very serious when I’m on the start line of a race, but outside of racing, I love to make jokes and am a very social person.”
McFadden says that even at events as important as the Paralympics, she’ll still find time to connect with other athletes and take photos, make TikToks or Instagram Reels, do arts and crafts, and go sightseeing.
“I love to make an adventure out of events like the Paralympics,” McFadden says. “Even if the ‘adventure’ is just going out to dinner with friends.”
3. She prioritizes self-care
As an elite athlete, McFadden spends a lot of time sweating and gritting it out in her daily training sessions.
When she’s not doing that, she’s found focusing on self-care keeps her mentally and physically refreshed and ready to hit the track again the next day.
“I’m the girl who wants to get the shower all steamed up, who uses a hair mask, takes time to exfoliate my skin, and then does some skin treatment afterward,” McFadden says. “Along with having a ‘young soul,’ people often say I look young, and it’s because I take such good care of my skin and hair.”
McFadden says that taking the time to truly pamper herself has been fundamental in keeping her mind and body ready to push hard when she needs them to.
“People put us in a box and think we all look a certain way and that we’re all the same. But the reality is we’re all humans and we look incredibly different from one another and have lives just like anyone else.” —Tatyana McFadden
4. She has a solid support system
Even with how much McFadden travels for races, at her core, she says she’s a “homebody” who “loves watching movies with my family.”
McFadden is still based in Maryland and doesn’t live far from her sisters and parents. Just by looking at her Instagram page, you can tell her sisters, parents, and boyfriend play a large role in McFadden’s happiness.
“Having a game night with my family and my boyfriend is a great way to have fun and decompress,” McFadden says. “Whether it’s movies or games, having a night of fun with my family means a lot.”
It means so much, in fact, that for McFadden’s birthday this year, her idea of the perfect day included planning and executing a party for her family, including a theme night complete with homemade snacks and tons of games.
“We all travel so much that it can be hard to get together,” McFadden says. “But that quality time together is amazing.”
5. She gets involved with meaningful projects
In addition to representing Team USA all over the world, McFadden is an advocate for parasports and educating others about athletes with disabilities.
McFadden helped to produce the 2020 movie “Rising Phoenix” on Netflix, a documentary about elite para-athletes and Paralympians and their impact on sport—and the work yet to be done to educate others about para-athletics.
“Rising Phoenix” won’t be the only film McFadden works on; she continues to work with producers on future films about similar topics.
“It’s been a lot of fun to have discussions about what we want future films to look like and to think about what social boundaries we might be able to touch upon,” McFadden says. “A lot of people don’t know what the Paralympics is, and they don’t want to read a thousand-page book about it, so these films are really important.”
McFadden notes that one of her goals with projects such as “Rising Phoenix” and future films is to teach others to stop putting athletes with disabilities into a box.
“Some people said that ‘Rising Phoenix’ glamorized people with disabilities,” McFadden says. “I say, that’s the point. People put us in a box and think we all look a certain way and that we’re all the same. But the reality is we’re all humans and we look incredibly different from one another and have lives just like anyone else.”
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